DOCSLIB.ORG

Tinctoris's Minimum Opus

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Tinctoris's Minimum Opus Tinctoris’s Minimum Opus ROB C. WEGMAN (Princeton University) he story has long been known and often been told: as a student at the TUniversity at Orléans, Johannes Tinctoris made a fool of himself.1 Proud of his accomplishments, and pleased especially with his literary prowess, he allowed his vanity to slip through and leave a permanent record, in full view of all posterity, in a document that would survive the centuries. That document, which is still kept at Orléans today, is precious for several reasons – not the least of which is that it is the only surviving text written in the theorist’s own hand. Yet what makes it truly invaluable is what he reveals about himself, intentionally and, perhaps, unintentionally. The text has been transcribed and edited by several modern scholars, and the facts of the case are well known.2 Yet the story they tell remains a footnote to the larger story of Tinctoris’s life. My aim in the pages that follow is to take another close look at the text, and to give it more of the interpretive scrutiny that we are accustomed to give to other documents from this period. Like so many medieval texts, the Orléans document raises questions that may not be obvious in a face-value reading. Indeed, upon sustained scrutiny we may soon find ourselves wondering what, exactly, is the story it tells, how much of a fool Tinctoris really made of himself, and who, ultimately, has the last laugh. Before delving into those questions, however, let us begin by recapitulating the story, and providing some of the context necessary to analyze it. The year is 1463, and Johannes Tinctoris is a musician in his late twenties. Although his celebrity as the most authoritative music theorist of his time is still a decade in the future, he can already boast an impressive start to his career. He is an ordained priest, a master in the liberal arts, and a successful professional musician. 1 Ronald Woodley, “Iohannes Tinctoris: A Review of the Documentary Biographical Evidence”, JAMS, 34 (1981), p. 217-248, at 225-229 and 243; Id., “Renaissance Music Theory as Literature: On Reading the Proportionale Musices of Iohannes Tinctoris”, Renaissance Studies, 1 (1987), p. 209-220, at 211-212; Leofranc Holford-Strevens, “Humanism and the Language of Music Treatises”, Renaissance Studies, 15 (2001), p. 415-449, at 424-426; Robert H. F. Carver, The Protean Ass: The Metamorphoses of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford, 2007), p. 249, n. 53; Jeffrey Samuel Palenik, “The Early Career of Johannes Tinctoris: An Examination of the Music Theorist’s Northern Education and Development” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2008), p. 8-29; Rob C. Wegman, “Tinctoris’s Magnum Opus”, ‘Uno gentile et subtile ingenio’: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Bonnie J. Blackburn, ed. Gioia Filocamo and Mary Jennifer Bloxam (Turnhout, 2009), p. 771-782, at 779-780. 2 Printed in Hilde De Ridder-Symoens et al., eds., Les Livres des procurateurs de la nation germanique de l’ancienne Université d’Orléans, 1444-1602, 3 vols. (Leiden, 1971), 1, p. 29-30, see also 2, p. 69-70; R. Woodley, “Iohannes Tinctoris”, p. 243; L. Holford-Strevens, “Humanism and the Language”, p. 425. 6 n REVUE BELGE DE MUSICOLOGIE / BELGISCH TIJDSCHRIFT VOOR MUZIEKWETENSCHAP Only a few years previously he had accepted the post of choirmaster at the Cathedral of Ste Croix in Orléans.3 With that position he had secured the safety and stability of a life within the patronage of a major institution, a steady income with good prospects of a decently beneficed career, a house to live in, and the daily opportunity to fine- tune a polyphonic chapel under his own direction. Yet his ambitions reached further than that. In 1462 Tinctoris had taken the next step: in the autumn of that year he enrolled as a student of law at the University of Orléans. This put him on an academic track that could eventually earn him the title of Doctor of Canon and Civil Law. With a law degree Tinctoris would be able to rise to positions of responsibility in civic, courtly, and ecclesiastical administrations. That his legal career meant a lot to him is clear from later evidence. In his treatises on music, Tinctoris would never be shy about his credentials as a scholar of law. Nor did he ever abandon the hope, not even in old age, of being one day awarded the doctoral degree that had apparently eluded him during his years at Orléans.4 In 1463 those aspirations were still some way from being realized any time soon. Yet in this year Tinctoris did write a document that offers a glimpse into his ambition to succeed and excel. This short but remarkable text survives in his own handwriting, and at first sight looks like a somewhat overwrought exercise in self-praise. Tinctoris, the fresh law student, appears eager to project himself as a man of distinction, a figure who stands out from among his peers, and who may be destined for great things. To this end he deploys a suitably exalted stylistic register, one that looks comically out of place in the immediate documentary context of a matriculation register. Tinctoris would succeed in making an impression on people who came across his text after he had left Orléans. But judging from their reactions, which survive as annotations scribbled in the margin, these later readers were struck less by what was admirable about him (at least in his eyes) than by the extravagant immodesty of his self- representation. Although his later career would vindicate the high opinion Tinctoris had of himself – he would soon be appointed as the chief musician at the royal court of Naples – this one document at Orléans continued to make him the laughing stock of other students at the university. In our own time it has attracted commentary from a number of scholars, and has been edited more than once.5 However, since the text is not free of ambiguity, and may be open to different readings, I propose to take another look at it here, and explore what may or may not have been the intentions of its author. The document that concerns us here survives in a hefty tome that is kept today in the Archives départementales du Loiret at Orléans, under the call number D. 213 (Fig. 1). It is the Liber procuratorum, the matriculation register of the so-called German nation, that is, the corporate body of those students at Orléans who came from the territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Since Tinctoris was born in Braine-l’Alleud, a small town in the imperial county of Brabant, he was eligible for membership in 3 Marlène Britta, “Contribution à l’étude des années passées par Johannes Tinctoris à Orléans: 1458–1465”, JAF (forthcoming). 4 Richard Sherr, “A Biographical Miscellany: Josquin, Tinctoris, Obrecht, Brumel”, in Musicologia Humana: Studies in Honor of Warren and Ursula Kirkendale, ed. Siegfried Gmeinwieser, David Hiley, and Jorg Riedlbauer (Florence, 1994), p. 65-73. 5 See above, n. 1 and 2. Tinctoris’s Minimum Opus n 7 Fig. 1. Statement by Johannes Tinctoris as he assumes office as Procurator of the German nation at the University of Orléans, 1 April 1463. Orléans, Archives départementales du Loiret, D 213, Liber procuratorum, vol. 1, fol. 62r. the German nation.6 This is how we first encounter him in the register, on folio 61v, when he is sworn in as a member by the nation’s procurator Petrus de Duvelandia. His matriculation, some time between July and October 1462, is recorded as follows:7 Tempore mee procurationis iuravit In the time of my procuratorship, the venerabilis dominus et magister Johannes venerable lord and magister Johannes Tinctoris de Brania Allodij, Cameracensis Tinctoris of Braine-l’Alleud in the diocese dyocesis, et succentor ecclesie Sancte of Cambrai, succentor of the church of Ste Crucis, et fecit iuramenta solito more et Croix, swore and took the oaths after the pecuniam procuratori et bedello nacionis usual custom, and paid the procurator and in promptu soluit; sed nacioni francum the beadle in ready money; but he promised in proxima electione solvere promisit, to pay the nation’s franc at the next election, quem francum nacio et supposita eiusdem which franc the nation and its members, solempniter congregata sibi ob specialem in a solemn assembly, waived as a special favorem remiserunt. favor to him. It is typical of documents like these that they are careful to record the titles and distinctions of the individuals. For example, Tinctoris is styled “the venerable lord”, which reflects his dignity as an ordained priest. He is also styled “magister”, which 6 Cf. most recently Ronald Woodley, “Tinctoris’s Family Origins: Some New Clues”, JAF, 5 (2013), p. 69-94. 7 Livres des procurateurs, 1, p. 28. 8 n REVUE BELGE DE MUSICOLOGIE / BELGISCH TIJDSCHRIFT VOOR MUZIEKWETENSCHAP means that he has successfully completed the liberal arts curriculum, possibly at another university. Finally, he is called “succentor” at the prestigious Cathedral of Ste Croix, which confirms that he is more than a mere singer. Tinctoris is a musician qualified to take on professional responsibilities at a major choral establishment. One further detail which Petrus de Duvelandia is careful to add is Tinctoris’s place of birth, and the diocese in which he had been ordained. It is his birth in Braine-l’Alleud, in the diocese of Cambrai, that confirms his eligibility to join the German nation. The task of the procurator himself, as we can tell from the document, was to admit new students to the nation, to record their matriculation in the register, and to collect the membership fees.8 The procuratorship was a position that rotated quickly, typically about three or four times a year.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Evolution of the Roman Calendar Dwayne Meisner, University of Regina
    The Evolution of the Roman Calendar Dwayne Meisner, University of Regina Abstract The Roman calendar was first developed as a lunar | 290 calendar, so it was difficult for the Romans to reconcile this with the natural solar year. In 45 BC, Julius Caesar reformed the calendar, creating a solar year of 365 days with leap years every four years. This article explains the process by which the Roman calendar evolved and argues that the reason February has 28 days is that Caesar did not want to interfere with religious festivals that occurred in February. Beginning as a lunar calendar, the Romans developed a lunisolar system that tried to reconcile lunar months with the solar year, with the unfortunate result that the calendar was often inaccurate by up to four months. Caesar fixed this by changing the lengths of most months, but made no change to February because of the tradition of intercalation, which the article explains, and because of festivals that were celebrated in February that were connected to the Roman New Year, which had originally been on March 1. Introduction The reason why February has 28 days in the modern calendar is that Caesar did not want to interfere with festivals that honored the dead, some of which were Past Imperfect 15 (2009) | © | ISSN 1711-053X | eISSN 1718-4487 connected to the position of the Roman New Year. In the earliest calendars of the Roman Republic, the year began on March 1, because the consuls, after whom the year was named, began their years in office on the Ides of March.
    [Show full text]
  • 0 Contents.Qxd
    Chronology Chart 1-6 Roman Calendar Explanation At the time of Christ, the Roman calendar and dating system were used throughout the Roman Empire. The calendar derived from the old lunar calendar of the Etruscans, which was designed to keep record of times for religious observances and festivals, and which retained as principal days of the month the kalends (first), nones (fifth or seventh), and ides (thirteenth or fifteenth), based originally on the phases of the moon. The months had been restructured by the Romans into a solar calendar of twelve months with several intercalary days at the end of February. March was the first Roman month, making September the seventh, October the eighth, etc. These names derive from the Latin words for seven (septem), eight (octo), and so on. The Roman calendar was reformed by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C., which version operated in New Testament times and still forms the basis of our own modern calendar today. Roman years were numbered ab urbe condita, “from the founding of the city.” The year we call 753 B.C. was the Roman year 1, the year that Rome is believed to have been established. References John F. Hall, “March Gods and the Etruscan New Year,” in By Study and Also By Faith (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1990), 1:643–58. A. K. Michels, The Calendar of the Roman Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967). Charting the New Testament, © 2002 Welch, Hall, FARMS Roman Calendar Kalendae First day of the month Named for Mars, Martius the god of the New Year Named for Aprilia, Aprilis Idus The fifteenth of March, a goddess of spring May, July, and October, but the thirteenth of all Named for Maia, other months.
    [Show full text]
  • Precincts of Venus: Towards a Prehistory of Ovidian Genre Joseph Farrell University of Pennsylvania, [email protected]
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Departmental Papers (Classical Studies) Classical Studies at Penn 2005 Precincts of Venus: Towards a Prehistory of Ovidian Genre Joseph Farrell University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers Part of the Classics Commons Recommended Citation Farrell, J. (2005). Precincts of Venus: Towards a Prehistory of Ovidian Genre. Hermathena, 177/178 27-69. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/158 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/158 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Precincts of Venus: Towards a Prehistory of Ovidian Genre Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Classics This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/158 Precincts of Venus: towards a prehistory of Ovidian genre by Joseph Farrell 1. Introduction One of the characteristically Ovidian themes in contemporary Latin studies is the plasticity of genre and the inventiveness with which Roman poets address generic concerns. Coming to terms with this problem has greatly advanced recent work on Latin poetry. In particular, our heightened ability to appreciate the shimmering ambiguity of Ovidian genre has led to a much more productive model for practising the hermeneutics of indeterminacy than had been current in Latin studies. Another recent gain has been an increased understanding of Ovidian genre in its historical
    [Show full text]
  • Durham Research Online
    Durham Research Online Deposited in DRO: 10 May 2021 Version of attached le: Accepted Version Peer-review status of attached le: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Ziogas, I. (2021) 'Etymological Law.', Incontri di lologia classica, 19 . pp. 179-200. Further information on publisher's website: http://hdl.handle.net/10077/32056 Publisher's copyright statement: c Copyright 2021 EUT EDIZIONI UNIVERSITA DI TRIESTE Additional information: Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971 https://dro.dur.ac.uk Incontri di Filologia classica Rivista annuale - Classe di valutazione ANVUR: A ISSN: 2464-8752 – eISSN: 2464-8760 http://www.openstarts.units.it/dspace/handle/10077/3528 direzione Gianfranco Agosti, Lucio Cristante, Luca Mondin, Giovanni Parmeggiani direttore responsabile Stefania De Vido comitato di redazione Lucio Cristante, Vanni Veronesi comitato scientifico Alberto Cavarzere (Verona), Carmen Codoñer (Sala- manca), Paolo De Paolis (Verona), Jean-Luc Fournet (Paris), Massimo Gioseffi (Milano), Stephen J. Harri- son (Oxford), Wolfgang Hübner (Münster), Claudio Marangoni (Padova), Marko Marinčič (Ljubljana), Philippe Mudry (Lausanne), Giovanni Polara (Napoli) redazione Vanni Veronesi Gli articoli pubblicati sono sottoposti a valutazione di referee interni ed esterni.
    [Show full text]
  • History of the Calendar
    History of the Calendar The premise of the earliest Roman calendar is the meshing of a thirty-day lunar cycle with an eight-day market week (the interval required for the processing of goat’s cheese). Four months of thirty days each was the soonest these two units can be integrated. 120 days also roughly corresponds with the gestation period of a pig. The first month of the Roman year was March, followed by April, May, and June. March is named after the god of war, Mars. April is derived from the word aper, a boar. May is probably related to an old word for a sow, and June is named after the queen of the gods, Juno. There is evidence to suggest that March and June were originally named Caprotinus and Fabarius, words also related to the raising of pigs. According to tradition, around 738 B.C. Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, added six months to the calendar. He unimaginatively named them the fifth through tenth months. An additional day was added to March, May, July, and October to maintain the eight-day market week –304 days. Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, added January (29 days) and February (28 days), and he took away one day each from the thirty-day months – 355 days. This calendar does not maintain the eight-day market week, but it does roughly coincide with twelve cycles of the moon, a lunar year. Initially intercalary days were added at the end of February to keep the calendar in line with the eight-day market week; later an intercalary month (Mercedonius) was added in alternate years to bring the lunar year into accord with the solar year and the changes in the seasons.
    [Show full text]
  • Calendars from Around the World
    Calendars from around the world Written by Alan Longstaff © National Maritime Museum 2005 - Contents - Introduction The astronomical basis of calendars Day Months Years Types of calendar Solar Lunar Luni-solar Sidereal Calendars in history Egypt Megalith culture Mesopotamia Ancient China Republican Rome Julian calendar Medieval Christian calendar Gregorian calendar Calendars today Gregorian Hebrew Islamic Indian Chinese Appendices Appendix 1 - Mean solar day Appendix 2 - Why the sidereal year is not the same length as the tropical year Appendix 3 - Factors affecting the visibility of the new crescent Moon Appendix 4 - Standstills Appendix 5 - Mean solar year - Introduction - All human societies have developed ways to determine the length of the year, when the year should begin, and how to divide the year into manageable units of time, such as months, weeks and days. Many systems for doing this – calendars – have been adopted throughout history. About 40 remain in use today. We cannot know when our ancestors first noted the cyclical events in the heavens that govern our sense of passing time. We have proof that Palaeolithic people thought about and recorded the astronomical cycles that give us our modern calendars. For example, a 30,000 year-old animal bone with gouged symbols resembling the phases of the Moon was discovered in France. It is difficult for many of us to imagine how much more important the cycles of the days, months and seasons must have been for people in the past than today. Most of us never experience the true darkness of night, notice the phases of the Moon or feel the full impact of the seasons.
    [Show full text]
  • The Christian Almanac 1867
    Disciples of Christ Historical Society Digital Commons @ Disciples History All Yearbooks Yearbooks 1867 The Christian Almanac 1867 L H. Dowling Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.discipleshistory.org/all_yearbooks THE LEADING MUSIC HOUSE OF INDIANA r ~E7=[-+=-'-1*£~_il 2 2 2 2 tl_i-u~~-.... -= •• -.--"=-= '~L A. BUTTERFIELD & CO. NO. 22 WEST WASIII~GTON STP.tET, MUSIC PUBLISHERS! WHOLESALE A~D RETAIL DEALEUS IN PIANOS, ORGA~S, -AND- • Ever~ Variety .of lYIusicalInstruments. Sole Agents for the Unrhal('u Pianos 01 Geo. Steck & Co., J iDdeman~s Cycloid. and The Parlor Gem. "WlIO'LT.SAIIr, .\GE"XTS 'FOR BURDETT'S COTTAGE ORGANS, The most bE"tl.Utifulin tono, have tll(' most power and facility of cxpreesion of any lwgal\ noW made. "The Harmonic Attachment," and the bt\antifnl "Vocal Tremolo," arlO features of this organ which surpass all others. TIH'Y fifC vcry tiurable, and where great powtJr, combined with facility for dclicrtto shading, is required, the'y stand with'" • out a rintl. Agents wanted in every town in Indiana. Music Engraved, Titles Designed and Engraved, Music Printed, etc. £Fnrthcl' information on musica.1 mattcn cheerfully given by addl"('ssing .J. A. BUTTERFIELD & CO., India.napolis, Ind. Send for specimen copy of" MUSICAL VISITOR," the cheapest and best Musical 'Mouthly n(lW published. One dollar a year, in adn\Dce. THE CHRISTIAN ALMAN AO· FOR 1'UE YEAR OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR 1867. BEING THE THIRD A.FTER BESSEXTLLE AND ',rHE NINETY-FIRST YEAR OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES. INDIANAPOLIS. IND.: I.. H. DOWLING, PUBLISHER. JOVRSA.L OFFICE paINT.
    [Show full text]
  • Renaissance Scholarship and the Athenian Calendar Paul Botley
    Renaissance Scholarship and the Athenian Calendar Paul Botley HERE WERE MANY calendars in use in the ancient Greek world. That the Athenian calendar survived them all T was principally due to the enduring attractions of her literature. Subsequently, this calendar was used by writers who did not fully understand its complexities, and the surviving references to it in ancient texts are often difficult to reconcile. The fifteenth century saw the first attempts since antiquity to reconstruct this ancient system of reckoning. The first part of this paper draws attention to a lost work of Manuel Chrysoloras on the months. It examines what the Greek and Latin reference works available to contemporaries had to say on the subject of the Athenian calendar, and it as- sesses their value in establishing the correct sequence of the months. It looks at a number of versions of this calendar which were used by fifteenth-century translators. Finally, it details the production and diffusion of Theodore Gaza’s influential treat- ise on the Athenian calendar, De mensibus. This first part touches on the erratic and inconsistent ap- pearances of the Athenian months in a number of fifteenth- century lexica. The second part provides a detailed account of the Athenian calendar as it appeared in all the Greek-Latin lex- ica printed between 1478 and 1530. This calendar, very widely diffused, was quite different from that promulgated in Gaza’s De mensibus. These surveys were conducted in the belief that the history of scholarship is a subject worth studying for its own sake.1 In this 1 Three works are valuable for the periods before and after this study: P.
    [Show full text]
  • About Calendars, Calendar Changes and a Tiny Bit of Astronomy
    About calendars, calendar changes and a tiny bit of Astronomy. Joana Soldado Magraner February 5, 2015 Joana Soldado Magraner About calendars, calendar changes and a tiny bit of Astronomy. Introduction. The tiny bit of Astronomy. Tropical (solar) year: time that the Sun takes to return to the same position in the cycle of seasons, as seen from Earth. Typically from vernal equinox to vernal equinox. About 20 minutes shorter than the time it takes Earth to complete one full orbit around the Sun as measured with respect to the fixed stars (the sidereal year). The approximation of 365.25 days for the tropical year: known for a long time but not used directly, since ancient calendars were not solar (except Egyptian and Iranian) Joana Soldado Magraner About calendars, calendar changes and a tiny bit of Astronomy. The Julian calendar. A little bit of history Introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. It was a reform of the Roman calendar. The ordinary year in the previous Roman calendar consisted of 12 months, for a total of 355 days. In addition, a 27-day intercalary month, the Mensis Intercalaris, was sometimes inserted between February and March, resulting in an intercalary year of 377-378 days. With some refinements, this system averages the length of the year to 365.25 days. However... The last years of the pre-Julian calendar were later known as "years of confusion". Joana Soldado Magraner About calendars, calendar changes and a tiny bit of Astronomy. The Julian calendar. A little bit of history Caesar's reform was intended to solve this problem permanently, by creating a calendar that remained aligned to the sun without any human intervention.
    [Show full text]
  • The Ancient Roman Civilization
    Grade 3 Core Knowledge Language Arts® • Listening & Learning™ Strand The Ancient Roman Civilization Roman Ancient The Tell It Again!™ Read-Aloud Anthology Read-Aloud Again!™ It Tell The Ancient Roman Civilization Tell It Again!™ Read-Aloud Anthology Listening & Learning™ Strand GRAde 3 Core Knowledge Language Arts® Creative Commons Licensing This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free: to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work to Remix — to adapt the work Under the following conditions: Attribution — You must attribute the work in the following manner: This work is based on an original work of the Core Knowledge® Foundation made available through licensing under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. This does not in any way imply that the Core Knowledge Foundation endorses this work. Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes. Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one. With the understanding that: For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ Copyright © 2013 Core Knowledge Foundation www.coreknowledge.org All Rights Reserved. Core Knowledge Language Arts, Listening & Learning, and Tell It Again! are trademarks of the Core Knowledge Foundation. Trademarks and trade names are shown in this book strictly for illustrative and educational purposes and are the property of their respective owners.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Latin Language
    m m THE LIBRARY of VICTORIA UNIVERSITY Toronto THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY FOUNDED BV JAMES I.OEB, I.I.. D. EDITED BV t T. E. PAGE, C.H., LITT.D. E. CAPPS, PH.D., LL.D. W. H. D. ROUSE, litt.d. VARRO ON THE LATIN LANGUAGE II VAREO ON THE LATIN LANGUAGE WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY ROLAND G. KENT, Ph.D. PBOFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY IX THE UKIVEBSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA IN TWO VOLUMES II BOOKS VIII.-X. FRAGMENTS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD MCMXXXVIII Printed in Great Britain CONTENTS PAOB De Lingua Latina, Text and Translation Book Vm. ...... 370 Book IX. ....... 440 BookX 534 Fragments ...... 598 Comparative Table of the Fragment Numbers 630 Indexes Index of Authors and . Works . .631 Index of Latin Words and Phrases . 634 Index of Greek Words .... 675 VARRO VOL. n B 369 M. TERENTI VARRONIS DE LINGUA LATINA LIBER Vll EXPLICIT ; INCIPIT LIBER VIII QUAE DICANTUR CUR NON SIT ANALOGIA LIBER I I. 1. QuoM oratio natura tripartita esset, ut su- perioribus libris ostendi, cuius prima pars, quemad- modum vocabula rebus essent imposita, secunda, quo pacto de his declinata in discrimina iermt,^ tertia, ut ea inter se ratione coniuncta sententiam efFerant, prima parte exposita de secunda incipiam hinc. Ut propago omnis natura secunda, quod prius illud rectum, unde ea, sic declinata : itaque declinatur in verbis : rectum homo, obliquum hominis, quod de- clinatum a recto. § 1. ^ Sciop.,/or ierunt. § 1. " That is, bent aside and downward, from the vertical. The Greeks conceived the paradigm of the noun as the upper right quadrant of a circle : the nominative was the vertical radius, and the other cases were radii which ' declined ' to the right, and were therefore called irraxjeis ' fallings,' which the Romans translated literalh' by casus.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Latin Language
    s iiiilllhlj STUDIA IN THE LIBRARY of VICTORIA UNIVERSITY Toronto THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY FOUNDED ay JAMES I.OEB, LL.D. EDITED BY t T. E, PAGE, C.H., LITT.D. E. CAPPS, PH.D.. LL.D. W. H. D. ROUSE, Lrrr.D. VARRO ON THE LATIN LANGUAGE VAREO ON THE LATIN LANGUAGE WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY ROLAND G. KENT, Ph.D. PROrESSOR OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY IJJ THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA IN TWO VOLUMES I BOOKS v.- VII. LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS MCMXXXVIII Printed in Great Britain CONTENTS Introduction page \'arro's Life and Works . vii Varro's Grammatical Works . , . viii \'arro's De Lingua Latina . , ix The Manuscripts of the De Lingua Latina . xii The Laurentian Manuscript F . , xv The Orthography of the De Lingua Latina x\ii The Editions of the De Lingua Latina . xxvii Bibliography ..... .xxxiii Our Text of the De Lingua Latina . xliii The Critical Apparatus .... xliv The Translation of the De Lingua Latina xlv The Notes to the Translation . , xlvi S}Tnbols and Abbre\iations . xlix De Lingu.\ Latina, Te.\t and Translation BookV 2 BookVL 172 Book VII 266 INTRODUCTION VARRO'S LIFE AND WORKS Marcxs Terentius ^'ARRO was born in 116 B.C., probably at Reate in the Sabine country, where his family, which was of equestrian rank, possessed large estates. He was a student under L. Aelius Stilo Praeconinus, a scholar of the equestrian order, widely versed in Greek and Latin literature and especially interested in the history and antiquities of the Roman people. He studied philosophy at Athens, with Anti- ochus of Ascalon.
    [Show full text]